The most simple method of advertising involves sending advertisements (hereinafter “ads”) to large numbers of potential customers. Such ads can be delivered via print media such as newspapers or magazines or via other channels such as radio, television, e-mail, the Internet and now software applications. The problem with this approach is that a large investment must be made to reach those few customers who may actually purchase the goods or services described in an ad.
To improve their return on investment (ROI), many advertisers endeavor to send targeted ads to selected consumers based on assumed consumer demographics. Demographic companies collect data on individuals based on the purchases they make, surveys they fill out, web sites they visit (behavioral tracking) as well as via other mechanisms. While this approach may lead to a better ROI for advertisers, the result is that consumers often feel that they are being watched and that their privacy is being invaded when they are presented with such targeted ads. In addition, this “data exhaust sniffing” produces poor results in terms of granularity. Specifically, when monitoring a user's activity via a behavioral tracking cookie, nearly every action a user does on her computer as well as what other users do on their computers is tracked. This mass of random uncontextualized information makes inferring granular information very difficult given all the noise.
Given these problems, there is a need for a consumer driven system and method that provides a consumer with a controlled way of collecting demographics and interests that can be connected with an advertiser's targeting goals.